


Evolution

by Katsuko



Series: Hurt/Comfort Bingo 2011 [9]
Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Child Abandonment, Community: hc_bingo, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Stealing, identity theft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-12
Updated: 2011-12-12
Packaged: 2017-10-27 06:14:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/292521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katsuko/pseuds/Katsuko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Most of her life had been spent looking out for number one. Written for both <span><a href="http://hc-bingo.dreamwidth.org/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://hc-bingo.dreamwidth.org/"><b>hc_bingo</b></a></span> and NaNoWriMo.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Evolution

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](http://hc-bingo.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**hc_bingo**](http://hc-bingo.dreamwidth.org/) Round 2, the prompt being "lost childhood." Also part of my aborted finish-the-card-NaNo challenge for myself.

When she was barely two years old, her parents moved. They sent her out to the backyard to play, saying that they would call her in for lunch. When the air got cooler and the sky got darker and she couldn't ignore the rumbling of her belly anymore, she went back into the house only to discover that everything was gone.

Her parents had left her behind.

She was lucky enough that a neighbor boy, only just five years old and not yet indoctrinated into the prejudices of the world in general, saw her and took her to his house. He snuck her food for six months before his mother realized what was happening and contacted children's services to come pick her up.

When she was four years old, she wanted to look as pretty as the little blonde girl who was lined up to be adopted in only a few days. As she walked past a mirror, she stopped and had to look again. Instead of her own face, a girl who looked _exactly_ like the little blonde-haired girl stared back. She spent several hours just sitting there, thinking about looking like nearly everyone she had met in her short life and giggling in delight as her own borrowed features melted into someone new.

The house matron frowned when she found her, but didn't say a word. Matron's displeasure in her new oddness came in the form of an even earlier than usual bedtime and no desserts for a month.

And it continued, with more restrictions added for every time she was caught changing her appearance, until she got fed up with it.

When she was seven years old, she made herself look like one of the younger house assistants, a woman of perhaps twenty years, and walked out the door. Just like her parents had when she was a tiny girl, she never looked back.

Being able to look like anyone was a good skill to have, and she employed it readily. Whenever she stole someone's wallet, easily slipping it away from the owner with him or her none the wiser, she would take on that person's appearance and use their identification to get money from the banks. After she had cash in hand, she'd shift to another form and return the "lost" wallet.

So many times, the owners were grateful and insisted on giving her a reward, which she took in addition to the money she'd already taken from them.

She sometimes used the borrowed money to buy food, but most of the time she just used it to get a room for a night or three. Once she'd managed enough money for a week of sleeping in a warm bed and hot showers.

Still, most of the time when she needed to eat, she simply broke into houses and raided the owners' pantries in order to stop the noise of her stomach.

When she was nine or ten years old, she couldn't really remember her age because the last actual birthday she'd had was her seventh, she got caught in the kitchen of a remote mansion by the owner's son. The only reason he'd caught her out was because he could read her mind and knew she wasn't his mother.

After that, she got to be a child... in a manner of speaking. The boy, whom she thought of nostalgically as "brother," had already grown up too fast himself, and it seemed like only a handful of years before they were leaving for England. After that was graduate school for her brother, and then the CIA came calling for help.

When all was said and done, she had chosen to leave her brother behind, because it was time for her to spread her wings once more and fly away.

But now, sitting in a remote safe house with a home pregnancy test reading positive and her lover out on a mission, Raven frowned. Her own childhood had been too brief and terrible, but she would be damned before her own son or daughter missed out on the chance to be a kid for as long as possible.


End file.
